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Show 138 past couple years, and I had driven him home many times. I rolled down my window and breathed the canyon air. The cabin-resembling house was behind a golf course, distinguished from the other cabin houses by its red roof. There was nowhere to park except the driveway where Laura's car was, so I parked on a flat area of leaves and twigs that looked like it used to be a campground. I knocked on the door and waited. When Blake and I came here late at night we had to sneak in through the garage to avoid waking Laura up. Usually we went into the basement to get something and then left again, so the house stayed dark and limited. I didn't see the whole house until they asked me to housesit and feed the cat and dog late last spring. Since it was a far drive, I would spend the night there, sleeping upstairs in a room looking out over the neighbor's dog pen below and then through the trees and the golf course in the distance. I made coffee in the morning, and listened to the rain fall on the red roof at night, making the sound of anxious fingernails tapping against a wooden desk. The house was quiet; Laura had a fire going in the fireplace and some papers spread out on her table. Letters, maybe. Before she showed me Blake's room, she warned me again about the flies, reminded me I didn't have to deal with the problem, she could hire someone to do it. I said I wanted to. She opened the door. She hadn't done much to change the room-there were still dirty shirts on the bed posts, books and records on the floor. The dead flies were all over the windowsill, falling onto Blake's bed below and covering it well past the pillow. They coated parts of the floor, sometimes two or three flies deep. I would |
